


The Hannunvaakuna of the Fjord

by LooNEY_DAC



Series: LooNEY_DAC's SSSS Crossovers [3]
Category: A Redtail's Dream (Webcomic), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle, Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Gen, SSSS cameos
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2018-09-01 04:45:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 4,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8608513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LooNEY_DAC/pseuds/LooNEY_DAC
Summary: An exploit of the Great Detective Hannu Viitanen, as related by his companion Ville.





	1. A Norwegian Named Sigerson

The winter had closed in early on Mikkeli, a steady stream of snow falling, or rather floating almost horizontally, in the Leipurinkatu. My friend and colleague Hannu Viitanen was most annoyed at this, as he had been contemplating going back to our village for the rest I keep nagging him about.

My name is Ville. Just Ville.

On the third day of the snowstorm, Hannu became even more morose than usual, as none of his usual diversions were open to him, and there had been a remarkable lull in the criminal element of Mikkeli. “What a shame,” he often lamented, “that such a boon to the citizenry means desolation to me!”

It was around mid-afternoon when the bell finally rang, announcing that some hardy soul had braved the storm to call upon us. The change in Hannu was as remarkable as it was instant. Gone was the ever-bleaker melancholy that had held sway over him, and in its place was the Vital Viitanen of old, ready for whatever may come.

Of course, he hid his eagerness for a case behind the cloak of his wonted misanthropy, but I could see it sparkling in his eyes as I went to show our visitor in.

The face that greeted me when I opened the door was a familiar one. “Why, if it isn’t Junnu Kuitunen!”

“Hallo, Ville,” Junnu said. Then his normally cheerful face drooped. “Is Hannu... occupied? I need his assistance on a matter of some urgency.”

“I’m sure he will be able to accommodate you.” So saying, I led Junnu into the sitting room.

Hannu looked at Junnu askance from where he sprawled in his favorite chair. “There’s been a murder in this weather?”

Junnu started, as he hadn’t yet said a word to Hannu. “How on Earth--”

“Immaterial,” Hannu cut Junnu off. “What I need from you are all the facts you can give me about this untoward occurrence.”

Junnu took a deep breath to steady himself. “Well, as you are aware, my interests require that I come to Mikkeli for brief periods throughout the year.” At Hannu’s nod, he continued, “On this last trip, I met several times with a Norwegian colleague named Sigerson. We were to meet again yesterday morning, but he didn’t show up, so I went to his lodgings directly after breakfasting.”

“And you found him dead,” Hannu finished for Junnu when that worthy paused in his retelling. “He had been brutally, shockingly murdered, had he not?”

Junnu nodded. “It was the most horrible thing I’d ever seen.”

“But there was something else,” Hannu prompted.

Junnu’s mouth worked for a moment before he could bring himself to continue. “On his desk was a note--a drawing, rather, of the old Hannunvaakuna symbol, with yesterday’s date written below. Naturally, I left everything to the police, but when I returned to my offices, I found-- _this_!”

He thrust a piece of paper at Hannu, who barely glanced at it before saying, “And you have no idea why the killer has set his sights on you?”

“None whatsoever,” Junnu affirmed. “My only dealings with Sigerson were matters of business, and never such things as might provoke someone to murder!”

“Nevertheless, I think it would be best if you remained here for the present,” Hannu said. “Ville and I shall begin our investigation at once, and there’s every likelihood that the matter will be cleared up presently.”

As we left, Hannu murmured to me, “There’s a doomed man if ever I saw one...”


	2. Russian Around

Inspector Puhujalava was already nosing around the crime scene when we arrived, having got wind of our impending involvement through that mysterious means that he had that enabled him to prevent most of the really serious crime in Mikkeli. Investigation and analysis might not be his gift, as it was Hannu’s, but organization and prevention certainly were.

“So, Kuitunen ran to you for help, did he, Viitanen?” The tall inspector wore his usual sour expression, revealing none of his thoughts. “Good to see you, Ville.”

Hannu almost smiled. “Did you expect anything less?”

“Certainly not; I’ll still keep him on the suspect list, though.”

Hannu twitched his eyebrow, but left it to me to ask, “Why on earth would you suspect Junnu, of all people?”

“I expect we can find some reason.” The inspector gestured at the murder room. “It’s obviously a crime of passion, and anyone’s susceptible to committing those if sufficiently roused.”

“Then why am I still alive, my good Puhujalava? I’ve certainly exercised your ire on a number of occasions, to say nothing of various others of greater or lesser moral fiber with whom I’ve had to associate.”

Inspector Puhujalava smiled tightly. “Don’t imagine I haven’t considered it. Irksome as you may be, however, you’ve never managed to rouse me to that blindly murderous state so often described by perpetrators of such crimes; I cannot say why others have restrained themselves, but that is my reason.”

A silent moment or two passed before the inspector queried, “Well?” At Hannu’s quizzical look, Puhujalava continued, “Usually by this point you’ve told me no less than fifteen points of identification for the murderer, sometimes even including his very name. Or do they all match Kuitunen too well?”

“If they did, I wouldn’t hesitate to tell you,” Hannu snapped back acidly. “For all the mess they made of it, though, our murderer has left surprisingly few clues of any sort, which would argue in favor of premeditation, as would the warning note Sigerson received.” Before the inspector could voice the objections forming on his lips, Hannu continued, “And yet, and yet, and _yet_ the sheer violence of the crime as evidenced by both body and room simply scream that this was a crime of _hatred_ \--not _passion_ , mind you, but _hatred_ in such a degree as is rarely to be found in our more restrained era.”

“Tell that to the Anarchists,” Inspector Puhujalava snorted.

“Sigerson was a foreigner, though, and a man of business who tried to stay away from any... local unpleasantnesses... in his endeavors. For such a man to have engendered such wrath against himself is most peculiar, to say the least.”

Puhujalava frowned. “You said ‘ _few_ clues of any sort’; what clues _have_ you found?”

Hannu pointed at a few fibers caught on a loose joint on an upended table. “From the killer’s attire, though what portion is more open to speculation than I’d like. Also--” Hannu carefully lifted the remnants of a down-stuffed cushion that had been shredded almost past recognition “--the killer was careless enough to cut himself in his excesses.” Several of the feathers were indeed bloody.

“Is that all?”

“Aside from the facts that he has a limp, is around six feet in height, and weighs around twelve stone, yes.” Hannu frowned. “Again, not terribly much, is it?”

“Not much is still more than we had.” The good inspector knew better than to question the data he’d been given. “Seen enough?”

Hannu shook himself. “Quite. My thanks. Come, Ville.”

After we left, Hannu hissed between his teeth in a rare sign of frustration. “Our Junnu is in a tighter spot than I’d anticipated,” he confessed as we made our way onward...


	3. Clash of the Titians

We were being followed.

At least, I thought we were.

It was actually a bit hard to tell whether the tall and gangly red-head was following us in the most amateurish way, lost and trying to follow us somewhere he might recognize, or following us while pretending he was lost. In any case, he was hurrying along after us, and I meant to put an end to it.

Even given the horrid gust of snow-laden wind assaulting us periodically, it was ridiculously easy to slip away from Hannu and circle back behind the stranger. He was fairly intent upon following Hannu, so the first indication he gave of being aware of me was his startled cry when I pushed him against the nearest wall.

“Who are you and why are you following Hannu?” I growled at him. The babble I got in return was so fast as to be nearly indecipherable, but I eventually realized that the fellow was speaking a very rural form of Icelandic. Wonderful.

I tried again, in the pitiful version of Icelandic I knew. “Who is ye, additionally why come along in our footsteps?”

“He’s a young Icelander here visiting his Finn girlfriend who got turned around in all this miserable snow,” came Hannu’s voice from behind me. “You can let him down, Ville; all he wants is to be told how to get back to where he’s staying.”

“Reynir!” A short but solid girl, one of the Hollola-Hotakainen bunch by the look of her, hustled up to us with that cry. Worry was scrawled on her round face as she babbled Icelandic at the hapless redhead. Then she gave me a look nearly as fierce as the one I’d given him, and ground out, “Turn him loose!”

The Hollola and Hotakainen families were neither the largest nor the smallest clans to be found in Mikkeli’s environs, but they had the reputation of being perhaps the most consistently eccentric bunch. I finally recognized this one as Tuuri Hotakainen, one of their more normal members.

When I failed to do her bidding in a timely enough manner, she repeated her demand, making as if to strike me, at which point Hannu intervened, grabbing her arm before it could lash out at me.

“Don’t,” Hannu warned her intensely. Then, after a moment where they stared angrily at each other, “Ville, I told you to let him down.” And I finally did.

“Let’s go, Ville,” Hannu said after another hard stare at Tuuri. “We’ve lost enough time on this as it is.”

“I won’t countenance some fellow following us, whether or not it has anything to do with a case we’re on,” I protested as we hurried on.

“While admirable in the abstract, in reality we’ve still lost precious time dealing with this.” Hannu exhaled. “Thank you for your alertness, though.”

We returned to the Leipurinkatu without further incident, though the weather did its best to foil us. Our client Junnu Kuitunen should have been awaiting us there in a nervous funk; what actually awaited us was altogether unexpected...


	4. Thoughts of Love and War

This was not good.

When we’d entered our stretch of the Leipurinkatu, we’d walked right into one of Hannu’s worst nightmares: a regular mob of reporters camping on our doorstep despite the weather, each clamoring for Hannu to tell them about his latest case.

I barely managed to get Hannu into our rooms without violence, and even then, I could tell Hannu would need several hours to recover from the event.

It was all so overwhelming that neither of us noticed until much later that Junnu was gone.

*

We started looking for Junnu at his favorite watering hole, a place Hannu and I came to not infrequently ourselves: _Murunen_ , at the sign of the Snake and Cow.

Since they knew us there, it made asking about Junnu much easier. Hannu being not _quite_ recovered from the earlier incident, we needed every advantage we could find.

We were eventually directed to two largish gentlemen who went by the _noms de guerre_ of “Mister Moose” and “Mister Bear”, gentlemen we’d had dealings with before when our paths crossed those of the more organized side of the underworld; you could say we were cordial enemies.

“Whereas we have had our differences in the past,” “Mister Moose” began.

“And probably will in future,” “Mister Bear” interjected. They tended to speak in turn like that.

“It is in all of our interests to ensure that this killer is brought to justice.”

“Like killing a mad dog before it can bite someone.”

Hannu grunted noncommittally.

“We have therefore taken the liberty,” “Mister Moose” continued, “of removing Mister Kuitunen to a place of refuge.”

“So you won’t need to waste time looking after him.”

“We consider it part of our civic duty,” “Mister Moose” lied glibly, at which I almost let out a derisive snort.

Hannu sighed heavily. “If Junnu isn’t back at the Leipurinkatu within twenty-four hours of the killer’s capture, I will turn my undivided attention to the unravelling of your entire organization and to ensuring that the two of you never draw another free breath. Is that clear?”

“Mister Moose” smiled tightly. “Of course.”

“Come, Ville.” Hannu stood, his face like thunder, and we left.

Once we were outside, Hannu growled, “Those two are beginning to annoy me, and for men in their dubious profession, that may yet prove fatal.”

“Puhujalava won’t touch them, you know,” I reminded him. “He told me it was a case of better the devil you know.”

“It begs the question of whether he or they are the bigger fools,” Hannu snapped. “I would that we dealt with no such devils at all.”

“A consummation devoutly to be wished,” I agreed.

Hannu sighed. “But none of this is getting us any closer to our goal.”

“Perhaps we should look over Junnu’s offices, or his lodgings?” I suggested diffidently.

Hannu’s scowl deepened. “Those benighted _reporters_ \--” he made the word a curse “--will be camped out in either of those places, making it impossible to gather any uncontaminated evidence. No, we must try to trace this Sigerson’s other local contacts; with any luck, both the press mob _and_ the crime mob will be so fixated on Junnu as to give us a clear field.”

So saying, Hannu hurried off into the night, leaving me scrambling to keep up on this next leg of our adventure...


	5. The Quintessential Hannu

It felt like we’d been wandering through the snow and getting nowhere for months, which improved neither Hannu’s temper (never good in the best of times) nor mine.

The snow kept getting thicker as we went on, as though some cruel demi-god had prevailed on the Ylijumala to hinder us for the present; it also seemed an apt analogy for our present inquiry and the lack of progress we were making in it.

A tall redhead enveloped in a nondescript brown overcoat walked swiftly past us through the snow; the only thing about her to attract attention was that she was one of the few to brave the snow, which barely seemed to slow her brisk and determined strides. Her expression was rather grim, but that suited the weather as well as her clothing did, so I paid her little heed.

Hannu felt differently about it. He pulled up sharply, his eyes fixed on the retreating figure. Then he swore bitterly. “Come, Ville,” he barked, and we hurried off in pursuit, though I had no idea why.

The redhead heard us, even through the muffling snowfall, and promptly vanished. Normally, Hannu would still be able to track her, but the falling snow was already obliterating her tracks as he sought after them, so we lost her.

It was then that Hannu had to face his weak spot again: people. There were several nearby, and Hannu knew one of them might have seen where the woman went, so he had to interrogate them. I tried to head him off, but Hannu was in one of his stubborn moods where he can’t wait for someone else to get the job done, so he does it himself. He usually manages to make things worse for all involved, but sometimes it goes unexpectedly well.

This time, it went... well, it went badly.

“I hate people; I hate people; I _hate_ people,” Hannu muttered viciously, walking around in little circles in the spot where we’d lost the trail. “ _Why_ did I get into a business where I have to deal with _people_?”

“Because it’s what you’re best at,” I replied. “Besides, if you were a bank teller or a baker or something, you’d have to deal with people even more often, _and_ you’d be miserable because you’d be tied down and unable to come and go as you like; you know this, Hannu.”

Hannu put his head in his hands and groaned. After another moment, he straightened, did a full body shiver as though shaking off the filth that dealing with people left on him, and was ready to set off again.

“Who was that woman anyway, Hannu?” I enquired. “And why were we chasing after her?”

Hannu’s face grew grim. “Her name is Sigrun Eide. She’s a Norwegian, and she’s here to kill someone.”

A Norwegian? “Does she have a connection to Sigerson?” I asked.

“No.” Hannu checked himself. “Maybe. But not necessarily. We won’t know until we find her.”

I waited for Hannu to elaborate...


	6. Bounds and Leaps

Someone was going to die, and Hannu and I were the only ones who knew, or cared, in all probability; but we were lost in the endless swirls of snow down the narrow streets of Mikkeli.

We had been searching fruitlessly for the Norwegian’s trail for I don’t know how long now, and getting nowhere. Hannu was still intent on finding the Norwegian, but I could tell that his frazzled state of mind was affecting his concentration.

This was where I had to step in.

You see, when Hannu gets flustered (or frazzled, or whatever you might want to call it) to the point where his concentration starts to go, there are two options: take him somewhere (preferably our flat) where he can wind down by himself… or what I was about to do.

Hannu was tracing and retracing a three-pace path into the snow, his movements anxious and jerky, when I stepped in front of him. Though he tried to duck away at first, I put my hands on the sides of his head and forced him to look at me.

“Hannu,” I told him firmly, “you need to focus.” Hannu nodded reluctantly. “Close your eyes.” He did. “Now, recite.”

Ages ago, Hannu had memorized an old English nursery rhyme; otherwise, he barely speaks that language. I don’t know where he first read it; I’m still not sure why it stuck in his head as it did; all I really know is that when his brain is ready to give out and there’s no time for him to have a meltdown, reciting the rhyme will bring him back; it re-centers him, if you will. The only catch was that I, and only I, had to force him to begin the process every time; he would suffer no other to do so. Even his parents could not.

His eyes still shut, Hannu began to speak in his rusty English:

“This is the house that Jack built…”

Whenever we had to do this (both far too often for my taste and far too seldom for Hannu not to have regular meltdowns), Hannu always ran through every step of the rhyme that he knew, even though he was usually fine by the time the milkmaid all forlorn made her entrance; so it was this time.

“…That ate the cheese that lay in the house that Jack built.” With that, Hannu opened his eyes, ready to resume the hunt. In another moment, we were off.

Hannu moved swiftly and decisively, barely seeming to glance away from his chosen path, so I knew he had made a Deduction on where the red-head was to be found.

“…Thank you, Ville.”

I almost missed the muttered utterance, so soft was it. It was rather unlike Hannu to express gratitude for our little ritual; I gathered he must have been even worse off than I’d suspected.

*

We were after a fire-headed Norwegian assassin, determined to stop her in her grisly trade; so we were both ready for action and danger ahead, but neither of us expected the coming encounter…


	7. Bridges Built and Burnt

“OK, so if you two’ll just stand still and stay silent right there, everything will be fine.”

The speaker, a short, golden-haired Swede, had stepped out to block our path just a moment ago. There was no obvious connection between him and the red-headed Norwegian assassin who was the object of our pursuit; but people rarely wear large placards conveniently labeling their relations to one another (though some would be much happier were that the case). Hannu had actually managed to overcome this Sigrun’s wily attempts to foil our pursuit to the extent that we had caught sight of her again and were hurrying to catch up when the Swede had stepped forth.

The Swede spoke up again after a moment or two of tense, watchful silence. “I don’t want to hurt you guys, but I can’t let you go on, you know?”

Hannu had not bothered to answer; I would have asked the golden-haired Swede whether he was “trolling” us, as those beasts say, but what happened next stopped me. With a great _FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM_ , a giant curtain of fire erupted into a circle surrounding us. This startled me enough that I allowed a word I’m not proud of knowing to escape; fortunately, the only one to hear me was Hannu, who had allowed a similar ejaculation of surprise and alarm to escape him.

We could still make out the Swede’s somewhat short form through the flames, and his next words came clearly enough. “See? Here’s a nice warm fire for you, but not so close that you’ll get hurt. Now just stay there and don’t do anything silly and none of us will have any trouble.” So saying, the Swede assumed a stance of relaxed watchfulness.

I wore my affront over this treatment like a badge of honor, but Hannu’s voice held only a detached—almost disinterested, even—curiosity when he asked, “Why are you doing this?” As I mentioned, he hadn’t spoken since the Swede stepped out in front of us; I could see that Hannu had been closely examining the boy, deliberately speaking out only now. “What is Sigrun Eide to you, or what are you to her?”

The question seemed to have caught our Swede foe off guard. He flushed and stammered for a bit before finally saying, “Well, um, you see, um—I’m her minion, OK?” He seemed to think that this statement was sufficient answer, because he nodded and repeated, “Yep, I’m her minion.”

“This little viking here’s my _most best_ minion,” Sigrun affirmed, stepping beside him. “But now, it’s time for us to go. See you, Hannu!” With a cheery wave, she drew the Swede away.

The fire was still high around us; but since it was, as the Swede had assured us, a safe distance away, we were in no apparent danger for the moment. I turned to Hannu, my face undoubtedly asking the question my lips hadn’t formed yet: “What on Earth shall we do about this, Hannu?”

Fortunately, Hannu’s attention was still on the duo who had so recently departed, rather than on me, as he dislikes it when I “fuss”. No, something had caught his eye, something that had given him fresh data, and he was feverishly examining how this new information affected the wretched tangle we (and poor Junnu Kuitunen) found ourselves caught up in…


	8. Interlude with a Red-Tail

The snow had closed in around us to such a degree that I’d had to close my eyes momentarily lest the flakes slice into them and blind me. When I opened them again, Hannu and I were standing on a flat, level plain that was bare as far as the eye could see, and without a hint of the town we’d been walking through just before. What was going on now?

“Yikes! Ummmmmmmm, oopsie!?”

The speaker was a rather abashed looking juvenile fox, which didn’t surprise me nearly as much as the fact of a talking animal should have; I suppose it had just been that sort of day (or night, as it were).

“Oh. Oh, no.” The puppy-fox looked even more horrified as it looked us over. Then it put a paw over its eyes. “Of course it’s you two. Of _course_.”

“Since you know us, it follows that we have encountered you before this. Since we do not remember the encounter or encounters, it follows that either you did not reveal yourself to us then or that you erased our memories of the encounter or encounters somehow. Which is it, if I may ask without offending?”

Hannu’s voice was perfectly calm as he asked the question; by all appearances, he was the only one present who had completely kept his composure. More surprisingly, both to me _and_ to the puppy-fox, he was actually minding his manners. It seemed the puppy-fox knew Hannu well enough to know how out of the ordinary this was for him, which to my mind argued for the second possibility Hannu had raised.

After giving Hannu a very calculating look for a few seconds, the puppy-fox walked over to him and asked, “May I sniff your hand?” When Hannu rather tentatively held the appendage out, the puppy-fox sniffed at it quite comprehensively before announcing, “Well, this is both better and worse than I’d thought, which is weird. So; explanation time!

“The answer to your question is: neither. You see, I met a sliiiiiiiightly different Hannu and Ville from a sliiiiiiiightly different world than yours. There’s a whole bunch of those, where something’s just a little biddy bit different from all the others, like Hannu being named Ville and Ville Hannu in one and stuff like that.

“Anyway, I can tell you aren’t the ones I met because you smell of a different world than theirs, not that you silly humans could tell.”

Hannu’s face hardened just slightly. “So, if we aren’t the Hannu and Ville that you met, why did you bring us here?”

“I didn’t do it on purpose!” The puppy-fox looked indignant again. “I was just trying out my new dream catcher— _that Kokko gave me_ ”—this last shouted at the heavens—“and… well… it looks like it caught you two by mistake.”

“Very well.” Hannu’s voice was as cool as ever. “A mistake happened, and Ville and I were caught by it. Now, is there a way to _un_ -catch us?”

A sly look came over the red-tail’s face as it answered, “Well, there just might be…”

I was not eager to hear what the unspoken _but_ was in the red-tail’s statement…


End file.
